Friday, May 11, 2012

As a 'welfare commentator' I suppose I should have something to say about the alleged Mongrel Mob's misuse of whanau ora funding. But it is hard to get even mildly warm under the collar about it, not least because it is Winston Peters poking the stick.

When you line it up against all the other tax money gangs absorb, the DPB that finances their women and children, the $100,000 annual upkeep when inside, the law and order funds for policing and processing them, etc. $20,000 is small beer. Within or without the rules, it's all the same to me.

Stories of children scavenging through pig slops and downing entire
bottles of antibiotics out of hunger are an "embarrassment to the
country" says a Kaitaia GP.
Doctor Lance O'Sullivan said he had been doing what he could to
fight the effects of child-poverty in his region but it sometimes felt
like an uphill battle.

“It is a human right's violation to tell poor people they can't have children.”- Susan Fraser (Crofton Downs)

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

The Salvation Army gets up my nose and they may as well stop sending me begging letters because they are off my list of worthy causes. I abhor their stance on welfare and now I can add their lobbying on alcohol reform to my reasons for disaffection:

The Salvation Army
recommends the Government immediately increase excise on
alcohol by 25 per cent. This would have little effect on
moderate drinkers but would reduce alcohol consumption by
teenagers and heavy drinkers – the most price-sensitive
consumers – by as much as 10 per cent.

Stop promoting punishment of the responsible for the actions of the irresponsible, not to mention the economic damage threatened to the many industries associated with alcohol production and sale. I'm sick of it.

I would gladly fund their practical work but cannot separate it from their ignorant and annoying advocacy.

What a (largely) depressing picture Alistair Bone paints of young people in Huntly. I am copying it in its entirety to keep on the record. Think about it next time you read or hear some do-gooder saying there is no evidence that females have kids to get on the DPB. Go into the right neighbourhood and homes (like I have and this writer has) and you will see it for yourself. I just hope that Paula Bennett is choosing the people who are going to be in charge of changing this mindset, culture, whatever you want to call it, very carefully. (Hat-tip Clint Heine and Friends)

'Cracking it' on welfare in Huntly

Mike Watane had plans and savings when he was a kid. He wanted to go around the world.
"There were places I had planned in my head. I saw the Gold Coast on
TV and thought that was a lot better than Rainbows End had to offer".
Then the unexpected happened.
"I saw her stomach getting bigger and bigger and thought 'aw yeah,
I'm trapped now'. That was pretty much my money gone, getting her
stretchy waist clothes."
He was 21 and she was 22.
He's still with his girlfriend. Baby is three. He's just come off a
welding course and goes down to Hamilton every couple of days looking
for something.
There's been no luck yet, so he's on his bike, literally, and talking to mate Poro Kingi on a street in Huntly West.
On paper it's a terrible place. Dead bottom and 10 out of 10 on the
deprivation scale, worse than Meremere, worse than Ngaruawahia, worse
even than living across the river in Huntly East.
It's hard to find actually abandoned houses in New Zealand, but
there's heaps here, their windows boarded with graffitied plywood.
The rail line runs straight through Huntly West and the twin towers
of the power station don't go anywhere. There are so many gangs locals
need more than a hand to count them off and subset them into senior and
junior.
Kingi's hefting baby Cali on his shoulder.
He and his partner are struggling, but Cali was planned and wanted.
He says a lot around here are not even 18 when they have their first.
He's lived here all his life and can't think of a time when that's not
been true.
They like the Government's new plan. Watane thinks long-term
contraception would help the younger generation, make it a place where
you just see girlfriends and boyfriends together and not with a kid in
tow.
The heat of the moment can do funny things to your plans, he says.
Down the road a bit and Te Aroha Kirkwood and Shanelle Herewini hear that.
"You tell them to wrap it, but sometimes they don't listen or they
are too drunk." Te Aroha giggles, she's on a benefit, 19 years old,
eight months gone.
Shanelle says she wouldn't take the contraceptive, even free – "put the money in the bucket".
Get the kid and take the money. She's laughing, maybe playing up.
But Te Aroha whispers, just about to herself, "I would like to have
that."
The Police Ten Seven crew were at the dairy earlier. Someone knocked
it over looking for smokes, the girls say. Three young guys turn up on
bikes. They're intense, they give names, probably not real.
Walter is 16, his girlfriend is 17 and pregnant. He doesn't have a job, just a mystery magic formula.
"Money is all around me. Why do I need a job when money just gets given to me?"
Despite that, he's going to hold off. He'll see how "hard case" the first one turns out before getting another.
Most of the girls won't go for the Government offer, he reckons. They want babies.
"I heard you crack it on the benefit if you have babies." he says.
One of his lieutenants has a different take. He learns the
Government doesn't actually want to pay people on a benefit to have
babies.
"They should move that thing – the minimum wage, yeah – up from
$13.50 and they might get a job. Even if they moved it to $15, that
would make a big difference," he says.
Farther down the same street lives Fay Love. She's been bowled by a
purse snatcher, but still takes a stick to the hoods in her yard.
The voluntary contraception offered to the teen girls of
beneficiaries is never going to work: "Half the parents round here are
going to say 'it's my child, they can do what they like'."
As she talks, more and more women appear on her steps. They agree. Take their benefit away or it's a joke.
Abby Martens flats with Desiree Maddern. They're both on the
benefit. Desiree was pregnant five times before she was 20, twice by
accident. She works with the cops in the Blue Light programme, trying to
put kids back on track. She's dead against it being compulsory.
She poses a question. "Are girls just having babies for the money, or because they want a baby, or to keep a guy?"
At 19, Abby would be the bullseye for the programme. But she
wouldn't do it. She doesn't believe in unnatural contraception; her
parents were very into homeopathy.
She's brave, honest. When she's with a partner, she uses a condom she says, but sometimes ...

Sue Bradford says, about the just-announced extra funding for long-term contraception for beneficiaries and their teenage daughters, "There are many in the church and community groups who believe that the
state should not play a role in women's reproductive lives."

So the state should discontinue current funding of contraception, family planning services, abortion, tubal ligations, maternity services, Paid Parental Leave, Plunket, fertility treatments, etc ? Is that really what Bradford is saying? It is a highly troublesome argument for her to advance.

In fact it is one you would be more likely to hear from me. Yet she is against this subsidy and I am for it. My reasoning?

I will go along with the latest funding because it is an attempt to reduce the social and economic cost that generally follows the birth of a child onto a benefit.

Monday, May 07, 2012

Describing political beliefs as 'left' or 'right' is convenient but
problematic. An old friend recently asked, "When did you become a
right-winger?" I didn't, I replied. A right-winger is conservative
on social issues like alcohol laws, gay marriage and voluntary
euthanasia. I'm not, because I believe in individual choice and
freedom. From very young the maxim 'live and let live' resonated for
me. So when government tells me what I can and can't do, I chafe.

Local government is, in some respects, a worse offender than
central, with vast powers to dictate what can and can't be done with
private property. To demolish my garage and build a new one, I am
told I have to push it back; or turn it adjacent to the street; have
a roller-door rather than an angle-opening one despite there being
no footpath outside. The process drags on and to rub salt into the
wound, my rates fund those putting unfathomable obstacles in my
way.

Central government is a less obvious but more pervasive force with
the power to take my property (compulsory taxes) to use in
ways not just wasteful, but actively destructive. Paying people to
have babies is a good example. Children produced as meal-tickets are
highly vulnerable.

When government robs Peter to pay Paul, it limits Peter's choices to
promote Paul's. Peter has no say in the matter except perhaps once
every three years, but even then, there isn't a lot to differentiate
National and Labour, both big spenders.

What I want from a government is less benefit spending, less
productivity-stifling regulation, less corporate and middle-class
welfare and lower, flatter taxes. And that's why I get put in the
right-wing box.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

The NZ Business Roundtable has merged with the NZ Institute to form what is now called The NZ Initiative.

The new head of this group is Oliver Hartwich. Here are some excerpts from an interview on The Nation.

Rachel When
our next guest left the UK to take up a new job in
Australia, then Conservative MP David Cameron remarked, the
sooner he gets on the ship the better. Economist Dr Oliver
Hartwich has critics and fans who've closely watched his
work at Britain's leading think tank, the Policy Exchange,
and more recently at the Centre of Independent Studies in
Sydney. He's now in New Zealand to head up the New Zealand
Initiative, a merger of the Business Round Table and the New
Zealand Institute. And after his first week on the job he
joins us now in the studio. Welcome to the programme Dr
Hartwich. It's quite an interesting merger, two very
different beasts. Why do you think they’ve brought you
in, is it because for example you may have a blank slate
when it comes to New Zealand?

Oliver Hartwich –
New Zealand Initiative Executive Director I
think they were looking for someone with a sense of humour
so they couldn’t go past a German of course. But
seriously the organisation, I mean it's built on the legacy
of two existing organisations, the Business Round Table and
the New Zealand Institute, but the idea was really to form a
new initiative, and that’s why it's called the New Zealand
Initiative, and it's built to really promote policies that
promote good policies for all New Zealand, for all New
Zealanders. We're basically showing the same visions
whether we're standing on the left or on the right, it
doesn’t really matter too much, we all believe in sound
economic management. Nobody wants to see high inflation, no
one wants to see high unemployment. We basically believe in
the same things, and we're trying to actually promote
policies that work for the whole of the
country...

I think the whole
political spectrum is basically converging towards the
centre, it's not just a thing that you will see on the
right, you actually see it on the left as well. I think we
have seen quite a bit of a conversion in the last 20 years
globally. So you’ve got the traditional left wing parties
moving closer to the centre, traditional right wing parties
moving closer to the centre, because in the end they're
driven often by opinion polls, by focus groups, by short
termism, and they're really trying to just grab the issues
of the day and politics I think has become much less
ideological after the end of the Cold War, and I think
that’s probably seen in many countries around the world
including of course most European countries..

I'm an old Liberal, I'm not a Neoliberal,
I really believe in individual freedom, I believe in
policies that work, I believe in empirical research driving
policy making.

....Maybe we should see a first light
return of ideology in political debates anywhere, because
what I actually miss from political debates is some clear
divisions. We have this convergence to what is centre.
What's really missing are debates, real passionate debates
really based on principles not just on opinion polls, not
just based on some focus group polling. I think the times
when we actually had debates between people who believed in
a more planned economy and other people who believed in a
more free economy, I think that they're quite healthy for
democracy. When democracies converge on the centre ground,
political debates become quite stale, they become
personality driven. I would actually like to have real
debates upon policy."

According to Stuff"Department of Work and Income statistics show in the 12 months to the
end of March, 5473 funeral grants were made, totalling $9.8 million.....In 2011, Work and Income issued 5412 grants totalling $9.3m, and in 2010, 5562 grants cost $9.3m."

Check out this MSD table which shows that in the financial year 2009/10 only 26 funeral grants were made.

Comments policy

About Me

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.